Having a Blast in the Wild West

                            Having a Blast in the Wild West

       Walking from the desert’s horizon, there was a shade moving forward. At first sight, it appeared to be a man riding on a horse. As the shade advanced, its shape became clearer. Now it looked like a man and a woman riding a horse. As the shade got even closer, it appeared that the woman was riding the horse and that the man was sitting behind her. But as the shade advanced again, one could finally see its true form.

       Walking from the horizon was a centaur woman. Her human half looked young but strong in a wild sense. She had long black hair and dark skin and a big fat cigar in her mouth. She was wearing a red western shirt and a brown coat in her human half. On the waist that connected the human half with her horse half, a brown leather belt was resting there, holding the two holsters that contained her trusty pistols. Her lower half was the body of a brown horse from the neck down with a black tail. Sitting behind her was a human. He didn’t look special at first sight, not with his short black hair that many people in the West had, but from his clothes one could see that he was the owner of the saloon.

Both individuals were happily talking with each other and laughing, not minding the hot sun above and behind them.  In a normal day, they would have complained about the sun, as they had done the day before they left town. However, today was a special day that made them forget about the heat of the desert’s sun.

“How are we going to name our baby, Sandra?” the human asked as he hugged the centaur’s human half.

“I don’t know, John,” Sandra answered, happiness still evident despite her doubts. ‘I think that we should think of two names depending on whether our baby is born as a boy or a girl.”

Sandra and John were a married couple. Although the difference between species and culture made things difficult for them at the beginning, the pair was truly in love with each other and managed to make it work, even earning the town’s approval despite the original scandal that surged when word got out about their first date.

“Maybe we can talk about names when we return to my saloon,” John offered with a smile. The more he thought about the arrival of their child the more excited he grew about talking about it at his saloon.

“I think that we should focus on our child’s species,” Sandra grinned as she revived an old argument. It wasn’t one of those serious fights that jeopardize a marriage. Instead, it was one of those competitive bets that couples had with each other every once in a while.

      Sandra and John originally had doubts about how to raise their child as they did not know what kind of species was going to be born from Sandra. Both of them had their own theories over the species of their kid. Sandra thought that her child was going to be a centaur like her. John thought that his human heritage was going to mix with Sandra’s centaur heritage and it was going to result  in a child with two horse legs. The argument even spread to the saloon, who took three sides in the affair. One side supported Sandra’s centaur  theory, the other side supported John’s so-called satyr theory, and the remaining side thought that the baby was going to be human. As much as the married couple squabbled over the bet, they couldn’t help but remember how different their relationship was when they first met.

      “Do you remember the first day I met you?” John asked Sandra as he kissed the back of her head, making her giggle.

      “How could I forget the sacred first meeting?” Sandra asked in a sarcastic tone that had a playful streak to it. “If I don’t remember, I bucked you out of orbit.”

      John winced but kept his smile as he remembered his first meeting with his wife. Some bandits had stolen a barrel of beer from him. Back then, he was very short-tempered and attempted to chase him on his own. When the bandits got into their horses, he attempted to temporarily steal a horse to chase after them. He had only seen the back of a horse  when he had climbed into Sandra’s back without her knowing him. Things went to Hell as Sandra knocked him off her back and then bucked him in the gut for getting fresh with him. Fortunately for him, she was going to replace the old sheriff of Saddlebrook so her first act as the sheriff was to capture the bandits that had stolen his beer barrel.

     After the capture of the bandits, John explained himself to Sandra over what happened and made it out for her with free drinks. Not one to reject free bear, Sandra forgave him and became a regular customer. As the years passed, Sandra and John developed a strong friendship with each other, as John found Sandra’s wild antics to be hilarious.

     “Remember that time when you ate that kid’s pet spider?” John chuckled.

     “It was an accident!” Sandra angrily blushed. She was just teasing a snotty kid. She didn’t expect the thing to crawl into her mouth and for her to swallow it whole out of reflex. Having been an eating champion before becoming a sheriff, Sandra’s tongue had instantly pushed the animal down her throat as soon as it felt its weight upon it.

     “Your eating habits are the weirdest that I’ve ever seen,” John playfully rubbed Sandra’s hair. “I don’t think that there is anything you can’t swallow.”
Sandra snorted, turning her head to blow a clod of cigar smoke into John’s face, making him cough. “I can easily swallow you whole,” she playfully teased back once her human husband had finished coughing.

     The married couple laughed as they shared a kiss. They couldn’t wait to return to the saloon to talk more about their baby. Their happy thoughts were interrupted by a bell that sounded very familiar to them.

    “That’s the bell from Saddlebrook!” Sandra called, all playfulness replaced with a serious tone of voice. “I got to go, John. Do you remember the way back?”

    “Sure,” John held on tight to Sandra’s waist as she reared on her hind legs and ran towards Saddlebrook. The town was very near, only a few minutes of running from Sandra. He held on to dear life as his wife ran at full speed as fast as her horse legs could carry them both.

     As they reached the town,  Sandra talked with the citizens to find out what had happened. Some gunslingers had started a gunfight after getting drunk and had run away after injuring a couple of citizens. Feeling the familiar anger at having one of her beloved citizens hurt, Sandra snorted and promised to make them pay.

     “I know how to find them,” Sandra darkly said as she went to a special place that only she and John knew about it. It was an observatory on top of her jail for criminals. Inside of it, there was some sort of large cannon on which a centaur could easily fit in.

     John gulped. He never really liked the cannon. Even with Sandra reassuring him that the body of a centaur was strong enough to withstand the force of being shot by a cannon, he still felt nervous every time that she fired it. His anxiety grew when he found out he was pregnant, as he was afraid that her firing herself from the cannon was going to hurt their baby. The reason they left Saddlebrook was to verify it was safe to use the cannon now that Sandra was pregnant. It turned out that she was free to use the cannon due to the womb of a centaur being hard enough to protect the baby inside.

     “I’ll be fine,” Sandra easily lifted her husband off her back and kissed him in the lips, knowing that he was still worried despite the doctor’s words.

     “Don’t get hurt,” John steeled himself.

     “I never do,” Sandra snorted arrogantly before she entered the cannon. She stuck out a hand with her cigar to light up the fuse before closing the door.

     Reflexively, John put his hands over his ears as soon as the cannon fired. He watched as Sandra was shot at full speed into the sky before disappearing out of sight. After giving another sigh of worry, John walked out of the jail and into his saloon. He started cooking extra for Sandra’s return as centaurs had large appetites due to having two stomachs, one for each half. As he prepared dinner, he heard an explosion. John bolted out of the saloon and found the citizens cheering into the horizon. Hearing them laugh and cheer only meant one thing for him, and that made him small.

    “That’s my Sandra,” he said to himself, feeling happy to know that his wife was going to return. He entered into his saloon again and continued making dinner, this time feeling more relaxed with his situation.

    A couple of hours later, Sandra came back, covered in soot but still in good health. On her back, she was carrying the two criminals, both of them unconscious and tied up.
“I told you I wasn’t going to get hurt,” Sandra smirked smugly as she gestured with her head at her husband to follow her back to jail. John complied, making sure to talk with Sandra along the way before she dropped the criminal into jail. With her job done, Sandra let John lead her into the saloon.

     Her reward for saving the town, as well as the special treatment that she was going to receive for the remaining months of her pregnancy was a banquet just for her. Her eating champion days were revived as she wolfed down absurd amounts of food into her mouth since the day she found out that she was pregnant, and this time was not an exception. She drank pints of beer and whiskey with each bite, not having to worry about her child suffering any defects as the womb of a centaur was just as capable of surviving alcohol as it was to being fired from her cannon.

    Once she was done eating and drinking, Sandra lit up a cigar to celebrate her triumph.  She took a whiff of her cigar, enjoying the smell. As she smoked, she felt an unpleasant but familiar sensation in her human stomach.

    Seeing her frown, John realized what was about to happen. “I think that you shouldn’t smoke right now, Sandra,” he suggested as he slowly approached her.
“No,” Sandra stubbornly refused to let go of her cigar, clamping it with her teeth. “I earned this cigar and I am not letting some stomach grumble stop me from enjoying it. You know how much I hate it when I don’t finish my cigars till the end.”

   “Easy there,” John lifted his hands in a placating gesture. “You drank lots of beer and whiskey. Your body is full of alcohol.”

    “As if I care,” Sandra snorted. “I’m not going to let it come out. I’m just going to bite my cigar hard and keep my mouth shut before it gets.”

    She stopped speaking, biting into her cigar harder than before. John recognized the signs as a result of hanging out with her so much before marrying her. It was a zone of no return for her and for him. There was only one thing to do now.

    “GET OUT OF THE SALOON! “ John shouted more out of alarm than genuine hostility. All of the customers did as they were told, already familiar with what was about to happen.

    Sandra struggled hard. She truly did. But in the end, it was a battle that she lost. The centaur let out a loud belch from her mouth. The alcohol inside her breath came into contact with the fire that was at the tip of the cigar.

    An explosion came out after that. John braced himself for impact, already familiar with the situation. With the worst already over, John entered into his saloon to check on his damage. It wasn’t really that bad, other than a damaged ceiling and his walls and floor covered in burn marks…and the table on which he prepared dinner for Sandra.

    Speaking of Sandra, she was standing in front of John and then everybody. Once again, she was covered in soot. She was giving John a very sheepish smile. Normally, John would have been angry for the damage, but when it was his wife he could only feel a brief annoyance.

    “I’m going to sleep on my office,” Sandra continued to smile in embarrassment at her husband. “I’ll see you later, John.”

    Sandra trotted awkwardly out of the saloon, the alcohol and embarrassment of destroying the saloon impairing her ability to walk a little. Sighing, John went deeper into the saloon to pick up a broom. Turning around, he looked at his customers and decided to do the only thing that could make such laborious task as fixing up his saloon as more bearable.

    “So, anybody got any good ideas on how to name my baby?”
The End.